This week the National Audit Office published its report on benefit sanctions. The NAO found that an increasingly harsh sanctions regime, extended in scope and severity, has been running for quite some time with only limited evidence on the outcomes and effectiveness of benefit sanctions leading to increased participation in paid work.

The NAO points out that government has a duty to evaluate its own rules, and to ‘balance their effectiveness in encouraging employment against the impacts on claimants and any wider costs for public spending’.

The report notes that the DWP expects that most people will not be sanctioned, and that the threat of sanctions will get most people to comply with their conditions. But, says the NAO, the reality is that almost a quarter of JSA claimants in recent years received a sanction – so it’s by no means uncommon. And there’s little by way of an evidence base on how people respond to sanctions. Nor does the DWP track the costs and benefits of sanctions.

Our project’s First Wave Findings, published in May this year, detail extensive evidence on the negative effects of conditionality and benefit sanctions:

Linking continued receipt of benefit and services to mandatory behavioural requirements under threat of sanction created widespread anxiety and feelings of disempowerment.

Routinely, sanctions had severely detrimental financial, material, emotional and health impacts on those subject to them. There was evidence of certain individuals being pushed toward survival crime or disengaging from services.

Our study found that harsh, disproportionate or inappropriate sanctioning was frequently reported by service users. It created deep resentment and feelings of injustice.

To date, our work has found little evidence of benefit sanctions bringing about the positive effects government intends. For example, our work finds:

There was limited evidence of welfare conditionality bringing about positive behaviour change. Evidence of it working to move people nearer to the paid labour market was rare. A minority of practitioners and service users did acknowledge some positive outcomes.

The common thread linking stories of successful transitions into work, or the cessation of problematic behaviour, was not so much the threat or experience of sanction, but the availability of appropriate individual support.

In summary, we need two things to improve the system for the future. First, it’s vital to find out more about the effects of sanctions and what works to bring about positive change in people’s lives. We hope that government will work with independent researchers – like our own project – to build the knowledge base on the effects of sanctions and support, and then act on that evidence.

Second, and this is important in the short term – we need to alleviate the problems related to the administration of sanctions as raised by the NAO report. Our research suggests some immediate steps could be taken to improve the current approach to sanctions and support within the benefit system:

A more graduated approach to sanctions that could involve incremental increases and/or a warning system.

A reformed approach to in-work Universal Credit recipients. Some practical approaches could be taken to overcome counterproductive effects in the UC ‘in-work progression’ system.

Improving the quality and level of support available to benefit recipients to enhance access to meaningful, sustainable work.

Better implementation to ensure greater fairness and consistency, proper communication with service users, and attention to people’s individual needs and circumstances.

In line with our ongoing work, the NAO report has cast a light on the limited evidence that benefit sanctions work to move people towards paid employment. Our ongoing qualitative longitudinal study with benefit recipients hopes to shine more light on the question of how, and if, sanctions and welfare conditionality more widely work to change people’s behaviour. Our final report will be available in mid 2018.

Our submission to the Commons Public Accounts Committee inquiry that debates the NAO report details our evidence. Read it here.

Professor Peter Dwyer is Director of the ESRC funded ‘Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change’ project and Dr Janis Bright its Impact Officer. See http://www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/

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You also have an exact and clear idea of how all this affects people who are actually caught up in it. Unfortunately, the people who are responsible for these policies and decisions have never had to deal with it so there is no understanding and no empathy. We are losing our humanity in today's society.

Why would people then bother to make a home and spend money on it? We have to get away from this mindset that has now taken hold that Social Housing.....hate that term, is just temporary to suit your immediate needs. People should not have to up sticks all the time because a child gets older etc. When the old system was in place ie older people with larger homes than they needed they were offered incentives to downsize. In the 90's more Older peoples accommodation was built. Bungalows, Sheltered Housing etc. People were given help with removal costs. This has all changed. To make someone move from a home they have been in for years is cruel if it is not voluntary. I have been in my home since it was built. My daughter moved out as she should when grown up to make her own home. So after 23 years with roots well and truly down, should I be made to move? I have my granddaughter to stay. My daughter's room is now for her and was also an office when I worked from home. I could not fit my home into a small 1 bedroom flat. I do not want people living above me. This idea that if you live in Social Housing it is just accommodation but if you own it is your home is totally wrong. My parents moved willingly into Sheltered Housing but the change affected them drastically. My dad became stressed and ill and died a year later and my mother never settled and died a few years later. This was because they uprooted themselves and left their home and all the memories and familiar surroundings. Unfortunately like most issues these days, the humanity is being taken out of it.

Great resources on linking welfare sanction and conditionally and key social policy considerations with human rights principles (including dignity, non-discrimination). These considerations have a huge impact in narratives around poverty and vulnerability, and should be closely looked at by policy decision-makers and street-level bureaucrats.

Ok. I don’t agree with the bedroom tax but I do feel it would be a better option if housing rules were changed. For example why do they wait until kids are over 10 until giving families two bedrooms?
Then I also think housing should be fit for purpose so I believe when they move someone from a one bedroom to a 2 or 3 it should be with the understanding only until the children grow up and leave home then they should have their Tennancy moved back to something more suitable again like a one bedroom.

A fine well written and clear example of what is broken in our welfare system.
They are asking for submission for the next select committee meeting on welfare and I would submit this post if it were my choice.
It is a vicious cycle for some who have no chance of finding work however hard they might try. It is the employers who ultimately make the decision if employees are fit and ready to work, not the DWP.
Having a budget of £2 per day for food , job searching activities, keeping your appearance and strength up, and having to jump through hoops and tick boxes on all those strength zapping, soul destroying schemes courses and programs that do nothing but heap yet even more pressure and stress.
The affects of stress on both mental and physical health are well documented and nothing can be more stressful than not knowing week in, week out, that your hand to mouth existence is constantly at risk.
Sanctions are death sentences for some, no getting away from that fact, those charged with administrating the regime should hang their heads in shame, it is those who should make the stand to bring about change.
Or do they deceive themselves into believing long time shirker Jim who they sanctioned last month and who has not been seen again at the local JCP, Is now enjoying the fruits of his labor thanks to the Works Coaches helpful push they so desperately needed.
So clearly sanctions work and a good done job done by me, high five everyone.